On November 2, Disney will release the animated feature Wreck-It Ralph, about an arcade game villain who decides he no longer wants to be a bad guy. It’s a charming premise, made all the much better by the fact that Disney were able to secure the rights to a number of classic gaming characters for the film. Whether these are simply minor cameos or if they’ll be in more scenes isn’t clear right now, but I can tell you I’m pretty excited about the movie (less so about the announced tie-in games, which will no doubt have none of these cameos).

Here’s a quick look at some of the familiar faces you can spot in the trailer.

One of the key sources of cameos is the “bad guys support group” that Ralph attends. Above you can see Dr. Robotnik from Sonic the Hedgehog, M. Bison from Street Fighter and Clyde from Pac-Man. If you click to see the full picture, there’s a yellow robot and a blue lady that I don’t recognize. They could very well be original characters invented for the scene, but if anyone knows who they are, let us know in the comments.

Also present are Bowser and Street Fighter’s Zangief, who has ones of the funniest lines in the trailer.

The zombie above could be from any game really (though Wikipedia says he’s based on Cyril from House of the Dead), but you can see what looks to be an off-model version of Kano from Mortal Kombat to the left. Neff, the purple rhino from Altered Beast is at the meeting as well, but I didn’t bother getting a screen grab since it’s probably been about 20 years since anybody’s played Altered Beast.

Above, you can see Q*Bert and the various villains from his game, who are apparently now destitute and begging for help in Game Central Station after their game is unplugged. You can also spot warp zones (I assume that’s what they’ll call them) to Burger Time and, I believe, Dance Dance Revolution (listed simply as Dance Rev) in the background.

If you look quickly, you can also spot Chun li from Street Fighter and Smoke From Mortal Kombat. Wikipedia also claims that you can spot Cammy in the trailer, though I haven’t seen her yet.

The character in the background of this shot is most certainly Paperboy, of the games of the same name, since he is in the process of falling off his bike and wears a yellow cap and a blue shirt, as seen in the game.

Ralph’s cherries are likely another Pac-Man reference. In a still from the film, he is seen giving the cherries to the destitute Q*Bert crew.

In other references, Ralph’s game, Fix It Felix Jr., is meant to evoke the Donkey Kong series in it’s graphic style, the cabinet art seen above, and certainly the “Jr.” addendum, as seen in Donkey Kong Jr. Interestingly, in the original Donkey Kong, Mario was the hero and the titular ape was the villain. In Donkey Kong Jr. the roles are reversed – Mario is the villain and DK Jr. must save his father. This reflects nicely with Ralph’s quest to become a good guy and raises the question of whether or not Ralph may have been the hero in the original Fix It Felix game (you can easily imagine someone in the movie telling him “you were always a hero, Ralph!”).

Seen above is Hero’s Duty, one of the games Ralph visits. While the title (and the first person shooter nature of the game) evoke Call of Duty, visually and thematically the game harkens back to Doom, Dead Space, Halo and myriad other futuristic first person shooters.

Finally, above you can see the the world map for the fictional game Sugar Rush, a candy based kart-racing game. The kart racing definitely calls Mario Kart to mind, and the world based on candy and sweets strongly evokes Super Mario World (which, if you recall, contained areas like the Vanilla Dome, Donut Plains and Chocolate Island).

Wreck-It Ralph looks like a fun romp, and I’ll certainly be checking it out come November. It’s an interesting project, but I assume the cameos will end up being fairly limited. It seems like the main action of the movie takes place in Sugar Rush and Hero’s Duty. While those “games” are highly reminiscent of real world games, it likely means that there will be a ton of original characters and the above cameos won’t be as important.

Which is a shame because after seeing this trailer all I can think about is some modern reworking of the old Captain N: The Gamemaster show. While the quality of that show wasn’t exactly high, and they took liberties a-plenty with the source material, the idea of massive gaming crossovers is very appealing.

Remember the cut-scenes in the Subspace Emissary mode in Super Smash Bros. Brawl? Those gigantic battle scenes were like something out of the very dreams of young gamers – Star Fox, Samus, Olimar and any other character with a spaceship teaming up to battle a giant gunship commanded by Bowser and Ganondorf was one of the most epic things I’ve ever seen. While I’m sure Wreck-It Ralph will be a fun romp, it really makes me want a movie, or a game or a cartoon series or whatever, that features these kind of crossovers. Some of my most prominent childhood memories are playing video game team up, where Mega Man and Sonic, for example, would team up to fight evil. Obviously, there’s copyright concerns, but as long as the contract benefits both companies there’s no reason these sort of deals can’t be made (look at Street Fighter vs. Tekken, Marvel vs. Capcom, Sonic in Smash Brothers, Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games, etc).

Anyway, it’s very likely that none of this will happen, but a movie like Wreck-It Ralph could be an important first step. Or, at the very least, it should be a fun night at the movies.

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